Welcome to Classic Movie Mondays

Classic cinema represents the best of what film can be. Most of the films we see and love today take ideas from the classics that came before them. La La Land, one of 2016’s most beloved films, owes a debt of gratitude to films like Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris and West Side Story. I believe that it is completely possible to enjoy films without having knowledge of what came before them, but I also think that having that knowledge enhances your experience of them.

I understand why people today might not want to seek out a 70-year-old film. Thanks to Netflix, Hulu and Amazon we have an unending stream of modern films to explore. Even beyond that, I know there are many people out there who simply don’t like black-and-white movies. Others find older movie effects laughable. There are some who don’t watch old films because they look and feel old. With every year comes newer and newer technological advances that make older films look less impressive. Yet, despite all of the reasons to not want to seek these classics out, I believe the reasons to do it far outweigh the reasons not to.

One of the things I love most in film is when I’m watching a movie and then I notice an “Easter egg” that gives a nod to an older film I love. This practice is extremely common in comic book films. Almost every comic book movie has some sort of reference to the movies or comic books that came before them. When comic book fans find them, they lose their minds with excitement over it. Well, it’s the same sort of thing when a regular film references a classic movie. In the film Scream, there are a lot of references to older horror classics that it takes inspiration from. In one such scene, we see a janitor named Freddy dressed exactly like horror-icon Freddy Krueger. In the Disney film, Zootopia, we get a hilarious “Easter egg” that directly references The Godfather.

 While “Easter eggs” are fun, they are not the only reason to watch classic films. Movies are a product of the time period in which they were created. Because of this, seeing an older movie is like digging up a time capsule and seeing what life was like in whatever year or decade the film is from. It is fascinating to see in what ways society has advanced and in what ways it hasn’t. A film like His Girl Friday, which is from 1940, is extremely relevant to the current movement of empowerment that women are going through. Likewise, movies like 12 Angry Men (1957) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) still have a lot to say about prejudice and social inequality, topics that still need to be discussed more than 50 years after those films were first released.

Every Monday, I will be talking about modern or beloved films and comparing them to the film(s) that they are influenced by. Things you might expect to see coming up include explorations of Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor and its influence on Captain America: The Winter Soldier as well as Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and how it served as inspiration for Phantom Thread. Some of these might be more of a “compare and contrast”-type of analysis with films such Black Swan and Dario Argento’s Suspiria. I believe there is a lot to be learned from classic cinema. This is meant to be a celebration of the films that paved the way for some of our most beloved films and I hope you join me in giving them the recognition they deserve. I am always open to suggestions if there is any combination of films you’d like me to explore!